ELEVEN bodies were laid out by the side of the road linking Vienna to the village of Ebersdorf. In the heat of the sun, their nauseous emanations filled the air. Three men were lacerated, striped with wide gashes – the vehement work of hussars was evident. Some had no apparent wounds and seemed to contemplate the sky with their staring eyes. Almost all were wearing the grey greatcoat with red cuffs of the militia. The French army, finding itself well advanced into enemy territory, wanted to protect its rear, particularly its lines of communication. This meant that certain officers were pitiless with spies, both the civilians who organised ambushes and the soldiers who fought for the enemy.
Bergen indicated Wilhelm. A bullet had struck him in the middle of the chest. His green jacket was stained with dried blood. Margont noticed the most striking feature last, as if his soul had at first rendered him blind to the ‘detail’. The adolescent had been mutilated. His smile had been extended from ear to ear, with a knife. He looked as if he were roaring with demonic, absurd, atrocious laughter and this impression was so real and lifelike that it seemed to give the lie to his death. Yet, already the body was decomposing. Margont looked away.
A second lieutenant was standing guard with two sentries. Recognising Bergen, he came to stand opposite Margont’s horse, saluted him and immediately declared: ‘No deal. The remains of partisans and rebels must be left exposed as a deterrent to others!’
With his triangular face and vituperative tone, he looked like a viper who had just been disturbed.
‘Captain Margont, 18th of the Line, Ledru Brigade, Legrand Division. The next of kin wish to recover the body of the boy with the mutilated face.’
‘First they’ll have to walk over mine!’ the second lieutenant retorted at once.
Margont almost felt like doing that. All he would have to do was launch his horse forward …
Bergen intervened. ‘I am one of the young man’s teachers. I assure you he never did anyone any harm. He was an orphan! Don’t you think he’s suffered enough in life without having to endure this punishment after death?’
The officer’s eyes widened. ‘You want an orphan? As the war proverb says, “One orphan lost, ten thousand found!” If they listened to me, they would display the body of an enemy in every street in Vienna and a gallows in the square of every conquered village.’
Any entreaty would simply bounce off such an entrenched view. Margont, making an effort to remain polite, asked, ‘Who gave the order? To whom can I go, to—’
The eyes of the second lieutenant blazed. They were persisting in wanting to steal one of his corpses! He was hatching them like eggs.
‘The 18th of the Line has not been charged with ensuring the security of the area! You have no authority on this subject. If we don’t subdue the Austrian civilians now, in two weeks’ time, they will slit open your stomach and piss in it while you sleep!’
He had fought in the Spanish campaign. There the two sides had outbid each other in atrocity. Frenchmen were found burnt alive, scalded, nailed to trees, emasculated, enucleated, dismembered, crucified … On their side, the French soldiers burnt villages said to be partisan and meted out bloody reprisals … The officer had returned alive from the Spanish quagmire but his soul and part of his reason had had to stay there, ensnared in a vision of horror.
‘I also fought in Spain,’ Margont told him.
The second lieutenant blinked, stupefied to find himself exposed in this way. His lips moved but his voice did not follow. Margont helped him out.
‘In any case, the body we wish to take away is decomposing. Better that his next of kin bury him now, rather than you having to do it later, in the sun.’
The junior officer stiffened. ‘Of course, obviously.’
‘How was he killed?’
‘He was caught by a patrol two days before the battle, during the night. He must have tried to rejoin the Austrian army with an accomplice. They were discovered somewhere in the woods near the Danube, not far from Vienna.’
‘Was his companion arrested or killed?’
Regret showed in the face of the second lieutenant. ‘Alas, he managed to escape. The soldiers were too far away, it was night-time … And it was already pretty good to have caught one of them. The other just had time to fire once before disappearing.’
‘It wasn’t a patrol that was responsible for that boy’s death. Look closely at his jacket: there are burn marks all round his wound. Someone shot him point-blank.’
The officer went at once to examine the body, worried by this discordant fact. Then he stood up, reassured.
‘Well, in my opinion, it was his accomplice who killed him. Either accidentally – he panicked and it was dark – or so that he wouldn’t denounce him if he was captured. Many Austrians left their mothers, wives and children in Vienna, he would have been worried about eventual reprisals—’
‘And the mutilation? How do you explain that?’
The second lieutenant shrugged. ‘Perhaps it was a soldier from one of the detachments whose friend had been killed by the partisans. War drives people mad. As for mutilation of corpses, I’ve seen worse …’
Margont did not doubt it. The man had become deaf to the horror of war because he had heard its cries of agony for so long. He had become accustomed to ‘all that’. For him, this abomination was no more than an anecdote, a momentary distraction in a dismal day of sentry duty. Although he did not know it, he was as dead as the corpses he guarded. The second lieutenant turned to Bergen.
‘Go ahead, take him. I’ll make an exception for a veteran officer of the Spanish campaign.’
The Austrian nodded. ‘Thank you, Officer. God will reward you.’
‘If your God exists, the settlement of accounts between the good I’ve done and the bad I’ve done will send me straight to hell, even if I were to let you leave with all eleven corpses.’
‘There were only two?’ queried Margont.
‘According to what I was told, yes. But the country is crawling with vermin. Enemy soldiers skirt round the front to the north or to the south, and cross the Danube in boats or at fords or by the remaining bridges. Then they hide in the forests and harass us. Don’t go adventuring for any reason in the countryside without a strong escort, Captain. Otherwise the air you breathe through your nose will leave you through the gash in your throat.’
The second lieutenant spoke animatedly. His eyes, although exhausted, with black rings under them, were always alert. He probably woke every night brutally brandishing a pistol at his phantoms.
He added: ‘But tell me, what did this young Austrian do to be so popular? The day before yesterday two hussars from the 8th Regiment came to ask me about him. They were sent by a lieutenant, one Relmyer. Is he a friend of yours?’
At that name, Bergen’s eyes widened. Having been mournful and resigned, he became extremely talkative. No one could make out his mixture of French and Austrian. He had to repeat himself more calmly. He was so emotional his voice trembled.
‘Did you say Relmyer? I know a Relmyer, I know him very well – Lukas Relmyer. He’s one of my old pupils. We haven’t seen him for years. Did you say a hussar came? An Austrian hussar?’
The second lieutenant raised his eyes heavenwards. ‘Don’t be stupid. If your Relmyer had been an Austrian hussar, I would have shot his two sidekicks on sight!’
‘If